1 Kings 21:20

20 Ahab said to Elijah, "So, you have caught me, my enemy." He replied, "I have caught you because you devoted yourself to do what is evil in the Lord's sight.

1 Kings 21:20 Meaning and Commentary

1 Kings 21:20

And Ahab said to Elijah, hast thou found me, O mine enemy?
&c.] So he reckoned him, because he dealt faithfully with him, and reproved him for his sins, and denounced the judgments of God upon him for them:

and he answered, I have found thee;
as a thief, a robber and plunderer, in another's vineyard; he had found out his sin in murdering Naboth, and unjustly possessing his vineyard, which was revealed to him by the Lord; and now was come as his enemy, as he called him, as being against him, his adversary, not that he hated his person, but his ways and works:

because thou hast sold thyself to work evil in the sight of the Lord;
had given up himself wholly to his lusts, was abandoned to them, and as much under the power of them as a man is that has sold himself to another to be his slave; and which he served openly, publicly in the sight of the omniscient God, and in defiance of him. Abarbinel gives another sense of the word we render "sold thyself", that he "made himself strange", as if he was ignorant, and did not know what Jezebel had done; whereas he knew fully the whole truth of the matter, and that Naboth was killed through her contrivance, and by her management purposely; and so he did evil in the sight of that God that knows all things, pretending he was ignorant when he was not, and this Elijah found out by divine revelation; so the word is used in ( Genesis 42:6 ) ( 2 Kings 12:5 2 Kings 12:7 ) , but the former sense is best, as appears from ( 1 Kings 21:25 ) .

1 Kings 21:20 In-Context

18 "Get up and go to meet Ahab king of Israel, who is in Samaria. You'll find him in Naboth's vineyard, where he has gone to take possession of it.
19 Tell him, 'This is what the Lord says: Have you murdered and also taken possession?' Then tell him, 'This is what the Lord says: In the place where the dogs licked Naboth's blood, the dogs will also lick your blood!' "
20 Ahab said to Elijah, "So, you have caught me, my enemy." He replied, "I have caught you because you devoted yourself to do what is evil in the Lord's sight.
21 This is what the Lord says: 'I am about to bring disaster on you and will sweep away your descendants: I will eliminate all of Ahab's males, both slave and free, in Israel;
22 I will make your house like the house of Jeroboam son of Nebat and like the house of Baasha son of Ahijah, because you have provoked [My] anger and caused Israel to sin.
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